Standardization Quotes

• If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.

  Henry Ford

  Thinking, Quality, Today

  Henry Ford (1926). “Today and tomorrow”

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• The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization.

  Fredric Jameson

  Heart, Clothes, Culture

  Fredric Jameson (2009). “Valences of the Dialectic”, Verso Books

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• I think standardization is really the first step to something being commodified.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Thinking, Steps, Firsts

  Source: www.nightmare-magazine.com

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• Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.

  Bill James

  Causes, Break, Rigidity

  "The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball". Book by Scott Gray, 2006.

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• Standardization does not produce although admirable as an efficiency method.

  Reginald Fessenden

  Science, Doe, Efficiency

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• Individuality is either the mark of genius or the reverse. Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.

  Frederick E. Crane

  Safety, Individuality, Genius

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• When they say accountability, they mean surveillance and standardization.

  Marc Lamont Hill

  Mean, Accountability, Surveillance

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• I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

  Albert Einstein

  Believe, Culture, Peril

  "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck". The Saturday Evening Post, p. 17, October 26, 1929.

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• Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

  Erich Fromm

  Equality, Men, History

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• Standardization of our educational systems [which includes testing]is apt to stamp out individualism and defeat the very ends of education by leveling the product down rather than up.

  Harvey Cushing

  Educational, Individualism, Defeat

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• We need standards with flexibility, not standardization with force if we are to get the best from our teachers.

  Andy Hargreaves

  Leadership, Teacher, Learning

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• Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.

  Diane Ravitch

  Education, Intelligent, Shining

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• Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.

  H. L. Mencken

  Class, People, Leader

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• With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.

  Arthur Erickson

  Artist, America, Goal

  Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.

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• Standardized personalization=universal right to meaningful learning. Personalized standardization=flexible access to mandated learning.

  Andy Hargreaves

  Leadership, Meaningful, Learning

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• The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.

  Alvin Toffler

  Wind, Organization, Mass Destruction

  "Future Speak". Interview with Scott S. Smith, www.entrepreneur.com. March 1, 1999.

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• Five coordinating mechanisms seem to explain the fundamental ways in which organizations coordinate their work: mutual adjustment, direct supervision, standardization of work processes, standardization of work outputs, and standardization of worker skills.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Skills, Organization, Work Out

  "The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research". Book by Henry Mintzberg, 1979.

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• Our goal should be minimum standardization of human behavior.

  Douglas McGregor

  Goal, Behavior, Should

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• What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives.

  Susan Glaspell

  Time, Clock, Standards

  Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook (1920). “Plays”

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• The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.

  Tom Robbins

  Practice, Lazy, Enemy

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• Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered.

  Alfie Kohn

  Education, Teacher, School

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• The enemy of the black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of youth is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo and the enemy of women is not men. We all have the same enemy. The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind. The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.

  Tom Robbins

  Redneck, Men, White

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• Standardization, instead of individualization. Cheap books, instead of private press editions. Active literature, instead of passive leather bindings.

  Jan Tschichold

  Book, Design, Literature

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• Cultural institutions by and large share one primary objective: herd control. Even when ostensibly benign, their propensity for manipulation, compartmentalization, standardization and suppression of potentially disruptive behavior or ideas, has served to freeze the evolution of consciousness practically in its tracks.

  Tom Robbins

  Ideas, Track, Manipulation

  "The Syntax of Sorcery: An Interview with Tom Robbins". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

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• The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American 'mind,' puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization.

  Julius Evola

  Thinking, Mind, Kind

  "American 'Civilization'". Essay by Julius Evola (1945), published in his posthumous anthology "Civiltà americana. Scritti sugli Stati Uniti (1930–1968)", 2010.

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